The Obama administration has drawn some flak for supporting some of these intrusions -- such as warrantless wiretaps and warrantless GPS tracking -- in the name of "fighting terrorism (the Obama administration was admonished by the Supreme Court on the latter issue). Still, for supporting such zealous federal surveillance provisions, the Obama administration did take a rather progressive stand on Monday, looking to stomp out local and state officials efforts to ban civilians from taping on duty law enforcement officers.

I. Department of Justice -- Citizens Have a Right, Responsibility to Tape Cops

The issue of citizens taping the police is a thorny one -- particularly if you're a cop. While some police officers support the practice, others claim it prevents their law enforcement abilities. Whether or not the latter claim is true, it's clear that video tapes of U.S. cops brutalizing civilians [example] -- at times beating them to death [example] -- have placed some cops in a load of trouble when the videos found their way to YouTube or other popular sites.

Some police argue that citizens taping them prevents them from doing their job.
[Image Source: Occupy News Network]

The Baltimore Police Department (BPD) was one of the departments that fought to silence members of the public, seizing their cameras and trying to prosecute them. But a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) forced the department to rethink its procedures -- and pay a steep settlement to a citizen whose camera was seized.

In it he recalls how citizen taping helped bring justice in one famous incident of police brutality. He comments, "A private individual awakened by sirens recorded police officers assaulting King from the balcony of his apartment. This videotape provided key evidence of officer misconduct and led to widespread reform."

He adds "given the numerous publicized reports over the past several years alleging that BPD officers violated individuals’ First Amendment rights."

Bans on taping also violating the Fourth and Fourteenth amendment, according to Mr. Smith.

He concludes that the department needs to clarify the importance and right to civilian taping, which he argues is necessary to "engender public confidence in our police departments, promote public access to information necessary to hold our governmental officers accountable, and ensure public and officer safety.

II. Letter to Attorney General May Have Spurred Response

The letter comes in the wake of a letter from several journalistic and civil rights organizations to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, pressing him to crack down on local efforts to ban taping.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was encouraged to defend the right to tape in a recent letter.
[Image Source: DOJ]

The First Amendment has come under assault on the streets of America. Since the Occupy Wall Street movement began, police have arrested dozens of journalists and activists simply for attempting to document political protests in public spaces. While individual cases may not fall under the Justice Department’s jurisdiction, the undersigned groups see this suppression of speech as a national problem that deserves your full attention.

The alarming number of arrests is an unfortunate and unwarranted byproduct of otherwise positive changes. A new type of activism is taking hold around the world and here in the U.S.: People with smartphones, cameras and Internet connections have been empowered with the means to report on public events. These developments have also created an urgent need for organizations such as ours to defend this new breed of activists and journalists and protect their right to record.

More pressure also came earlier this month when the U.S. 7th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in Chicago banned the city from suing the American Civil Liberties Union from audio taping officers on the job. No, you didn't read that wrong -- in an ironic twist Chicago tried the bold move of turning the tables and suing the ACLU over taping.

In its ruling, the court wrote, "The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests."

The victory came by a narrow 2-to-1 margin.

U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner -- the lone appellate justice who voted to dismiss the ACLU's countersuit -- acknowledged that taping was "more accurate" than relying on recalled conversations, which are often ruled unreliable evidence in court. But he argued allowing civilians to maintain accountability via taping violates officers’ rights to privacy and could hurt officers’ ability to "perform their duties". He writes, "These are significant social costs for weighting them less heavily than the social value of recorded eavesdropping."

In response to Judge Posner's minority criticism, the ACLU argues that the only "duties" taping prevents would be orders to brutalize citizens. The Illinois branch's legal director, Harvey Grossman comments on the victory, "In order to make the rights of free expression and petition effective, individuals and organizations must be able to freely gather and record information about the conduct of government and their agents -- especially the police."

Much like the controversy over corporate intrusions of individual home networks and data mining, the debate over bans and prosecution for civilians who tape cops is unlikely to go away. It is an issue that divides cities, courts, local officials, and even the police officers themselves. But much like the issue of corporate surveillance, the Obama administration appears to be increasingly throwing its weight behind a pro-civil liberty stance on this issue, even as it pushes what some would call an anti-civil liberty stance on federal surveillance.

To put this debate in context, it is important to note that both the Chicago Police Department and the Baltimore Police Department have a reputation for police brutality.

The BPD is under scrutiny for spending $10.4M USD in the past three years ($3.5M USD annually) to defend its officers against allegations of brutality and wrongdoing. This week the latest in a string of internal affairs investigations of the department led to the suspension and criminal arrest of a BPD officer.

Chicago also has spent millions to defend allegedly crooked cops, keeping them on its payroll. Citizens of Chicago were protesting in the streets this week in the streets over alleged police brutality. While not all locals are fans of the protests, some argue it is necessary. An anonymous resident told Fox News Chicago, "I'm glad they got a march because the police are crazy out here. They come out here roughing us up ... sending innocent people to jail."

Chicago has nearly 700 active cops with 10 or more reports of brutality or misconduct filed against them. [Image Source: NBC]

The Chicago PD has faced 441 citizen lawsuits and paid out $45M USD in damages over the past three years. The city has successfully fought to prevent the release of the names of 662 cops who each had 10 or more complaints of misconduct or brutality filed against them. Most of these cops remain active and prowling the streets.

Most police agencies now days record a lot of what their employees do. From police stops to interrogations more often than not its being recorded. If they can do it why shouldn't joe blow citizen be able to do it ? The claim that it hampers a police officers job is retarded. If you do things by the book you have nothing to worry about if not then you should be accountable even if the recording is done by a third party. Period.

Yes it looks suspicious though. There was a Fulerton cop(yes that fullerton) that was feeling up women he pulled over. Anyways they figured out that his voice recorder happened to be turned off at the time of each accusation. Hmmmm

Where I am the things are setup so that the cameras can't be turned off or on manually, but rather are only activated when the officer turns his lights on. We have shady things occur all the time where the cops follow you and pull into a driveway behind you and give you a ticket or some such thing and never turn their lights on because it keeps the cameras off. Love it when your cited for doing 10+ over and your cruise was set at the limit, but there is nothing you can do about it. Your word vs. his. BTW what I am dealing with are your typical small boring town cops that just write tickets rampantly and whatnot ... no brutality or warrantless earches and the like ... yet.

If you actually go to court to fight those kinds of tickets and they don't have any actual evidence (like a radar gun scan), there is no way you will actually have to pay for a ticket. Most of the time the cop doesn't even show up, the case is thrown out, and you don't have to pay anything.

Posner thinks torture is OK, too. He attempted to justify it by creating a fictitious scenario in which torture produces reliable evidence, evidence that can't be obtained otherwise:

"If torture is the only means of obtaining the information necessary to prevent the detonation of a nuclear bomb in Times Square, torture should be used—-and will be used--to obtain the information.... No one, who doubts that this is the case, should be in a position of responsibility."

Torture is very unlikely to produce reliable evidence and less abusive methods of obtaining information are more likely to succeed. Torture isn't about obtaining information. That's not the point of it.

agreed. torture has no justification, just as coerced confessions have no validity. I just wish most people were intelligent enough to understand that. Most people are just stupid sheep and do and believe as they're told.

torture isn't effective but the threat of torture is. Once you start causing real pain you get nothing useful but if someone "thinks" you are going to pull out their fingernails a lot of them will talk. The key is to have the cred, threats mean nothing if they know you won't follow through, so you spread rumors and throw in some actors who tell the others about their torture.

Useful, but not for getting credible information. Torture is useful in other ways, like demonstrating that the torturing party, and the authority he/she represents, has no morality. It's also useful for getting false, but politically expedient, information.

Police are public servants. They work for the people, are paid by the people's tax and are sworn to uphold the law and protect the people. They are public servants doing their jobs in public and as such, should have no expectation to privacy while in public. Nor should anyone else in public. That why it is called "public" and not "private".

I don't get back to comments very often and often when I do, the comments are closed.But to clarify, on the job is what I am referring to. Off-duty, what they do with their time, I don't really care. It's their time.

This is one of those places where you can't put lipstick on a pig with out showing how corrupt you are. I believe this "judge" needs to be disbarred or at least disciplined. You cannot exclude evidence of corruption in the system with out being corrupt yourself.

Just like everyone else, they are accountable. In Canada we need citizens monitoring crooked cops and in the US, you certainly need the same from the looks of things. If you're not doing anything wrong and you're following the law yourself, why would you object?

since most of america has NOT seen the entire video relating to KING....I find it a poor example of why video taping protects citizens. Especially since King has had numerous run-ins after his rise to fame. Money does not errase a persons character. A duck is a duck is a duck. A POS is a POS is a POS.

I believe what Police object too is when citizens get up in their face with cameras...in an effort to get the next YouTube sensation. Citizens begin to interfere with the police officers ability to do his job safely.

In the end...I feel more and more police will leave the job. Thus reducing societies law enforcement and the continued expansion of a mob-like society. It's time to start plans on moving out of this country. Criminals DO have more rights than law-abiding citizens....but you are blind if you don't see an increase in citizens taking matters of protecting themselves in their own hands...as police hands are tied and the justice system is a growing example of impotent justice system.

With a guy like Eric Holder in charge and Obama being president, they should change the name. There is no justice in the Justice Department. It's nothing more than their arm to try and go after those who don't do their bidding. Or try and demonize men with charges of hate crimes who get caught up in a media firestorm because of lies told about the circumstances in which they were forced to shoot a young black kid.

Meanwhile all the "retaliatory" attacks that have happened since then have gone completely ignored.

You wanna tell me where I said anything about it being ok for cops to stop people from recording them?

The topic in this article doesn't change the fact that the Department of "Justice" is nothing but a crooked group designed to legally attack anyone who doesn't agree with Obama's agenda. Immigration, voting laws, the environment, border security, gun laws, you name it. They stand on the wrong side of them all.

The video was obtained from a city camera that is monitored by the police by the way. The scary thing about this incident is that the cops felt secure enough to also beat him to death in front of a bunch of witnesses. Last I heard the police department is going to be disbanded and the sheriff's office is going to take over the area. It sounds to me like the FBI decided that the culture of the Fullerton PD was broken.

Normally, I kind of agree with you FIT, but in this case, I disagree completely. I've had enough of cops abusing their power and doing their jobs with such a lazy attitude.

Many cops, most cops that I've had to deal with, are lazy bullies and need to have their powers revoked. I've had cops pin accidents and assaults on the first person they just didn't like. (I was in jury duty on a case where they pinned an assault charge on a guy who wasn't even within a block of the assault when it happened, and was shown on surveillance tape being over a block away. It cost that poor guy $35,000 in legal expenses to fight the charges, despite being totally innocent of the charges. In addition, they let the guy who actually did assault several people get away with it completely.) When I was in college, I had my car completely emptied, newly laundered clothes dumped in the mud on the side of the road, because the cop had caught me speeding weeks before. I paid my ticket and adjusted my driving habits, corrected myself to the straight and narrow, and this cop continued to pull me over for any BS reason he could think up every single weekend when I'd pass through his city on my way home. I had one situation where I was accused, and even charged, for armed robbery just because my car was seen in the parking lot just before the robbery. They accused me of being his getaway driver, despite the lack of anyone else getting in my car on the tape. (The guy had actually run down the street, and not taken any car at all, and this was obviously visible in the tape, if he'd only watched it long enough.) I could go on with examples, but I can tell you I have never had a good experience with cops, even when I was the victim.

I do my best to keep on the straight and narrow. Yes, my driving is a bit fast and a little careless, but overall I'm an honest guy. I don't take drugs or abuse alcohol, and never have. I don't steal. I don't assault people. I have people cause me trouble once in a while. I've been in 9 car accidents, where I was at fault in one, and had a lazy cop pin another one on me.

I know there are some cops with good intentions when they start, but they get corrupted by the environment and cover for their fellows' corruption. It's all in the attitude of "everyone guilty of something" when that is far, FAR from the truth. They're all tainted by it. They all become it. It doesn't matter what their intentions were in the beginning.

Don't trust any cop. Plain and simple. As far as I'm concerned, they're all guilty. They're all abusing their power. I suppose they're better than everyone being in street gangs for protection, but not by much.

quote: It's all in the attitude of "everyone guilty of something" when that is far, FAR from the truth. They're all tainted by it. They all become it. It doesn't matter what their intentions were in the beginning. Don't trust any cop. Plain and simple. As far as I'm concerned, they're all guilty.

That's one of the mistakes the public is making. Most cops aren't racist. they're just bullies, and they push people around for whatever reason they can think up, because they have fun with it. Racism is just one of those excuses.

All police officers are corrupt, sharing in the corruption by protecting their fellow officers from punishment for abusing their authority and power. As we learned from Frank Serpico's story, any cop choosing to stand for what is right gets pushed out. Therefore all that is left are dirty cops.

Most people who are not police officers who lead good lives and don't hurt others. Most people don't go around robbing other people at gun or knife point. Most people don't go around dealing drugs. Most people don't go around taking drugs. Most people don't go around beating people up. Those who do these things are a small minority. Yet, because police officers deal with that small minority so frequently, they begin to think of everyone as being that way.

In addition, and probably because of this attitude, they begin to cease actually protecting the innocents and begin taking shortcuts, curtailing citizens' rights, privacy, and property. (For instance, the seizure of people's property on our highways without charges or due process. It's a growing, horrible problem these days. Highway driving can cost you your car, money, or other belongings, no matter if you are doing anything wrong or not, all in the matter of "the war on drugs.")

This is all cops. Those who stand up for what's just and honorable are pushed out. They aren't allowed to stay cops because the corrupt ones outnumber them so badly.

All cops are not corrupt. Most are hard working men and women who are out to protect the citizens of where they live and work. Do they let each other off sometimes for speeding or what not? Yes. You do exactly the same damn thing for your buddies. Or do you call the cops any time your friend has had a few drinks and drives home?

My cousin, shot to death by a police officer. What they don't tell you in this article is that there are 6 points of physical evidence clearly apparent in the crime scene photos that completely contradict the police officer's account.

I can show that he was laying on the ground, bleeding from the head from a fractured skull when he was shot twice just from GSR, blood spatter, and where the bullets hit the curb behind him. The knife had one bloody thumbprint on the handle, the officer's, while my cousin's hand and arm were covered with blood up to his elbow. (Showing that he couldn't have been holding the knife when he was shot.) The evidence speaks for itself. You don't even need any education in CSI to see the obvious in this crime. I have those crime scene photos on CD at home, trying every year to get the Colorado Attorney General to prosecute the cop.

This is the same cop that, along with 5 others, beat down a homeless man for stumbling into a cop picnic in a public park and Philadelphia just a few years before, and was let off with no charges and "no wrongdoing" because the cops rallied around him. He claimed he took out his nightstick because he was "trying to sweep his sunglasses out of the way so they wouldn't get broken." Yet, you can clearly see him raise and lower that nightstick quickly, as in hitting someone, three times in the video. (I'm still trying to find the link to that video.)

All the while, the cops rally around him to protect him and proclaim his innocence. All of those cops share the taint for protecting this murderer.

In the justice system, people who cover for others who have committed things like murder, kidnapping, and robbery are called accessories, and are frequently punished with the same level of jail time as those who committed the offenses. By their very logic, all police officers who cover for corrupt cops are themselves as corrupt. They are accessories.

What I don't understand is that these corrupt cops have already betrayed every other cop with their corruption, eroding their credibility, destroying all their progress. So why do these cops consider it a betrayal to fail to cover for corrupt cops?

It only makes sense that they cover for each other so intensely because they are all that corrupt. As I said, any cop standing up for what is right and working to rid the departments of those corrupt cops are pushed out. The police departments of today have no room for good cops. All that is left are corrupt cops.

Corruption thrives in systems not individuals. The difference between a police officer and everybody else is police officers swear an oath to uphold the law. As such they must be held to the highest standard of the society. If a police officer looks the other way when another police officer commits a crime, any crime, they are failing in their duty. That makes them corrupt by omission. Police do not patrol alone. Therefore every incident of wrongdoing should be noted and acted upon. But as we all know this does not happen often enough. Those brave individuals who do act are bullied out of the police force.

Police officers are given powers that no ordinary citizen possesses. That is a sacred trust which must be upheld at all costs for the police forces of this world to maintain their legitimacy in the eyes of the societies they serve. All power corrupts. Police officers are human. They are susceptible to the same temptations as the rest of us. If they become corrupted by the system they are not individually to blame. The system has failed them as much as it has failed us.

Police officers are first and foremost citizens of the society they serve. They must be subject to the same laws as the rest of society. If they are not then the society will never trust them. And that is the exact situation we have now. Internal review, closed door investigations and a lack of transparency all contribute to the mistrust of police forces everywhere.

Individual police officer's acts of corruption are not the problem. They are the symptoms of a system that is fundamentally flawed and broken. A system that fails to serve the very people it was created to protect. Until we as a society, a polity and a community are prepared to change that system sniping at cases of individual police misconduct and tarring the whole police force with the same brush serve no purpose beyond eroding public confidence in police officers.

Surely, we all want a police force that acts in the best interests of the society they are sworn to serve and protect. Police officers who maintain the highest standards of conduct and behavior. Perform their jobs with unimpeachable professionalism. If you want to change the system get involved. Decisions are made by those who show up. Put up or shut up!

code of silence they let each other off for more than speeding. Things like spousal abuse, writing reports to reflect justified use of force when its questionable, etc. If you remember the bridge incident after katrina where a cop blatantly murdered a guy, the other officers all cover for that cop.

No different than an office where it just goes ignored since "Its none of my business" unless the people are good friends.

quote: writing reports to reflect justified use of force when its questionable

No different than a buddy at work helping you cover up a mistake you might have made on a project.

No where have I said all cops are good. They are humans. We are all flawed and sinful. Some more than others. I do not advocate for or support police who cover up excessive, unjustified force or blatant killing. But the premise that all cops are bad is something that the last few decades worth of people have tried to perpetuate through the media and culture and I will not stand for it. It breeds hatred towards authority figures which is a bad thing for society since it inevitably extends to parents.

I'm tired of whiny little bitches who cry because they get in trouble for doing something wrong, something they knew was wrong. Bad people, cop or no, deserve to be punished for their misdeeds. But in the real world, that doesn't always happen. It doesn't make all people, cop or no, bad though.

I agree not all cops are unethical but I do think the job attracts authoritarian aggressive types. Plus they deal with people I'm bad situations all day every day, which probably doesn't improve their attitude.

1. He was my cousin, not my brother. I wasn't particularly close to him, but I knew he would not have done what that cop said he did.

2. It wasn't that just the minority of cops are corrupt (they aren't from my experiences. I have only met one cop I would consider a good guy, but he still had a certain problem that all cops have.) The big problem is that they all cover for the corrupt cops. they let them get away with things like assault, robbery, murder. There are many reports of people driving cross country and having their vehicles, money, and other belongings taken by cops in the name of drug law enforcement when the cop couldn't come close to proving the people had committed any crime beyond speeding. http://offgridsurvival.com/carrycash-tennessepolic... It's not just a minority. it's cops covering for others, good men getting forced out of the profession, and bullies getting promoted. There are no good men left in the police departments.

Again. Where do I say that cops should be allowed to stop people from video taping them.

The only time I agree with the cops on that issue is when people are being unruly or obstructive in their attempts to video tape something and is causing a problem with the cops trying to do their job.

It's funny how all the guys who say "Don't trust any cop" and who come up with all these outrageous cop horror stories eventually admit things like, "Yes, my driving is a bit fast and a little careless".

You break the law, get caught and then bitch, whine and lie about the police because you're pissed that you got caught. You know what? If you don't want to have to confront the police? DON'T BREAK THE LAW! I don't drive fast, I don't drive careless and I don't get pulled over. Wow, what a concept!

I hope that when you are in a real emergency or have an armed thug breaking into your apartment that you have the balls to deal with it yourself instead of dialing 911 and making the lazy, abusive bullies driving the black and white cars come and save your sorry, whiny ass.

The overwhelming majority of police are out there to make the world a safer place for all of us. They put themselves in harms way to deal with the scum, the crazies and the violent so that we don't have to. Yes, there are a few bad apples here and there that make the rest of them look bad from time to time. But doesn't every profession have the same problem?

I am always polite and respectful to any police officer I meet BECAUSE THEY DESERVE IT.

ok, so I've had a speeding ticket. One. I've had one accident where I got distracted at a key time and hit the corner of someone's bumper. I know I did wrong there, and I took my punishment like a man. I paid the fines and didn't gripe.

My griping isn't over that. it's about one cop treating me like a drug dealing criminal just because he caught me speeding, another cop murdering my cousin while all the other cops let him get away with it, and so many others I see in the news getting away with everything.

CreigWell put! I believe that you hit the nail on the head. I have had an officer let me go for a minor speeding violation because i was being polite and respectful. Its the way I was raised so I've never had any run-in with my local PD.

With how many forms of good video and photo manipulation suites there are out there (and an increasing number of people who can knowledgeably use them), it's getting harder and harder to determine whether or not a video or photo is even decent evidence.

They could just as easily be proof of corruption as they could be a lie constructed to harm a cop who pissed someone off because they got caught doing something stupid.

quote: it's getting harder and harder to determine whether or not a video or photo is even decent evidence.

I disagree; even high-end Photoshop work leaves tell-tale signs, and video manipulation is just even more difficult. Plus, if someone claims a manipulated photo or video is genuine, just put him/her on the witness stand and swear them in... and then charge 'em with perjury if their work turns out to be phony.

Jason, you used the term 'tape' (or a variant) about two dozen times in this article, and you are supposed to be a TECH writer... Tape usually refers to something that comes on rolls (or, in some cases, reels...). Taping usually refers to an activity that uses the above medium. You know that. At least I hope that you do... Yet, it was used in this article about two dozen times to refer to some activity that had nothing to do with rolls or reels, but instead almost exclusively referred to digital recording devices, using some form of digital memory as the recording medium. Sloppy journalism. I have given up on your spelling, ditto for your grammar. Now I suppose that I have to give up on your understanding of all things technical as well. For future reference, use 'record' or 'recording' or 'recorded' instead of 'tape' 'taping' and 'taped' and you will then be using a term that adequately describes a whole range of activities that can be done on a wide range of media, and doing so without offending those that actually do understand a bit of the technical aspects of this subject.

But, to actually comment on the supposed subject of this article, the phrase 'if you have nothing to hide...' comes to mind. As does the saying 'What's good for the goose is good for the gander.'

"If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion." -- Scientology founder L. Ron. Hubbard